Vehicles may use an oil delivery system to lubricate and/or cool various components of an internal combustion engine.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,823,545 describes a piston squirter system that squirts oil on an underside of each piston. The system includes a gallery that connects a pump to the piston squirters. Further, the system is arranged such that it excludes control valves, and oil is delivered to the piston squirters in response to oil pressure.
The inventors herein have recognized various issues with the above system. In particular, by excluding control valves, cooled oil is circulated through the system at any engine operating condition. Further, by not controlling oil flow to the piston squirters, engine warm up is delayed, which also increases emissions.
As such, one example approach to address the above issues is to separate a squirter passage from a feeder passage such that a cooler is positioned within the squirter passage and not included within the feeder passage. In this way, it is possible to lubricate various engine components, while reducing engine warm-up time. Specifically, the squirter passage includes a valve upstream from the cooler that selectively communicates the cooler with the feeder passage at a position upstream from a filter provided within the feeder passage. This configuration enables less-filtered oil to be routed through the squirter passage and provided to the cooler after engine warm up. Further, by taking advantage of only cooling less-filtered oil in one embodiment, a peak flow through the filter can be reduced. In an alternative, more-filtered and less-filtered oil may be selectively cooled, for example.
Note that various sensors may provide input to a controller for actuating the valve to selectively communicate the cooling circuit with the oil feeder passage. Further, various return passages may be included in the oil delivery system. Further still, the cooling circuit may include a filter, if desired.
It should be understood that the summary above is provided to introduce in simplified form a selection of concepts that are further described in the detailed description. It is not meant to identify key or essential features of the claimed subject matter, the scope of which is defined uniquely by the claims that follow the detailed description. Furthermore, the claimed subject matter is not limited to implementations that solve any disadvantages noted above or in any part of this disclosure.